The Philosophers' Cocoon

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Job-Market Reporting Thread (2025-26)
Job-Market Discussion Thread (2025-26)

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  • Expressing that one wants to leave a TT job for one’s home country in a cover letter?

    In our January “how can we help you?” thread, a reader writes:

    I have a question about trying to move from one institution to another as a person with a permanent job.

    I have a permanent job in philosophy. However, I absolutely hate where I am and so does my spouse. I only started the job a year ago. I have been a postdoc for years beforehand, and have lived a broad for a while, but I do not want this to be my life permanently. Both me and my husband desperately want to return to our home country, and there are a couple of jobs coming up there this year.

    My question is: How do I express on my documents (usually just a cover letter) that I would genuinely take a job in my home country at far less prestigious universities than the one that I am currently at simply because I want to be home?

    I have been told by a few people close to me that one concern that some search committees might have is that I am seeking to leave a job that I have just been appointed to, without really giving it a go.

    I cannot think of a professional way to express that I just don’t want to live overseas anymore and I want to work in my own country.

    I think I would just be forthright about this in the cover letter, as it seems to me a completely understandable reason to want to move. But maybe I’m missing something.

    What do readers think?

    8

  • How do PhD admissions weigh undergrad GPAs vs. more recent accomplishments?

    In our January “how can we help you?” thread, a reader writes:

    I have a question about PhD admissions screening.

    Is it common for programmes to filter out applicants purely based on undergraduate GPA before the rest of the application is reviewed by the committee? I have seen many online posts claiming this happens, but I am unsure how accurate that is.

    My undergraduate GPA was below 3.0, but that was over ten years ago. Since then, I completed a master’s degree and published a journal article in Synthese. I am currently waiting for PhD decisions and am worried that my old GPA may lead to an automatic rejection without consideration of the rest of my profile.

    I would appreciate any insight or similar experiences.

    I’d be curious to hear about this. I would hope that in the OP’s case, admissions committees would give much greater weight to the applicant’s more recent record (i.e., their publication in Synthese and GPA in their Masters program). Then again, I’ve never served on a PhD admissions committee.

    Do any readers have helpful insights to share?

    2

  • When you can’t recall which journals you’ve sent a paper to?

    In our January “how can we help you?” thread, a reader writes:

    I have a paper that I’ve been regularly submitting to journals for years now, with long waits followed by rejections each time (par for the course). But I am now at the stage where I literally can’t remember which journals I’ve sent it to and which I haven’t. In the future I’ll make better note of this, but does anyone have any advice? I’ve tried logging into the journal portals and searching my email, but I have changed institutions and sometimes used different emails (also something I’ll change), and I’m pretty sure not everything is turning up. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing I haven’t thought of, but I thought I’d ask here in case someone else has had a similar issue and advice.

    I’d recommend that the OP do everything they can to recover their login info for journal portals before submitting the paper–but obviously, that could be difficult if they no longer have access to an email from a previous institution.

    What do readers think? Any helpful tips?

    7

  • Handling scriptural arguments on philosophy of religion topics (e.g. problem of evil)?

    In our January “how can we help you?” thread, a reader writes:

    Pedagogy question: I teach a fairly straightforward version of the problem of evil from the Stich and Donaldson text in 101. The longer I teach it, the less sure I am in terms of how to respond to students who raise specific questions about scripture and events in the Bible in terms of challenging the POE without sounding dismissive.

    Its a real pedagogical challenge for me as I am not and do not pretend to be literate about much of the Bible other than what my basic Catholic upbringing taught me.
    I had a student basically accuse me of misinformation today in class.

    This is how I might describe it in a discussion post to students:

    ‘Many theists will respond with Biblical scripture or passages to respond to various versions of the problem of evil. For example, they may respond with ‘the flood’ caused God in the Old Testament. Theists might also invoke ‘the devil’ as an evil force in the universe that causes evil and suffering in the world. Atheists might find these kinds of arguments unconvincing because they depend upon belief and faith in the very things they deny exist. What do you make of this kind of back and forth? Is this ultimately just an ‘agree to disagree’ scenario or is there more to it?’

    What do readers think?

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